4 Reasons to Read The Canon of Medicine by Avicenna

• The Canon of Medicine can teach you just as much about history as it does medicine. Ibn Sina wrote this book during the Islamic Golden Age, which was around the 8th to 14th centuries. This book specifically was written during the early years of the 11th century. This book was so successful and accurate that it was used in universities around Europe until 6 centuries after Ibn Sina's death. However, this book can also be a primary source when it comes to analyzing the time period of the Golden Age of Islam as well as the change in medical knowledge over time. By looking at this book and comparing the information presented or the explanations given for certain phenomena with our modern-day understandings of these topics, we see that doctors and physicians during Avicenna's time were actually not wrong. Something interesting which piqued my interest was that while the methods used to treat certain problems were accurate, such as massages for muscle soreness, the book would not state the actual reason for why it occurs. It seems as though medicine at that time was less about understanding the human body and more about curing the many different ailments that had bothered people for centuries. This was actually the reason I checked out this book originally. It was going to be a source for my history project, but not because of the medical knowledge in it. I was going to use it for comparing and contrasting the scholar and the intellectual developments made then and how they affected current day medicine. Overall, this book can serve as a valuable tool to understand the intellectual landscape of Avicenna's time.
• Avicenna wrote the book in a way that does not make it difficult to understand, like most medical textbooks from his time. I was personally taken aback when I started reading the translation as it was far clearer and easier to understand than I had thought it to be. Last year, I had read Copernicus' On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. It was originally written in Latin, so it too was translated. However, the translation was still very complex and required re-reading sections multiple times to truly understand what was going on. Most people would attribute this to the translation, but I found through many book reviews that this was a consistent view that many people shared. But this book surprised me in a good way, since reading the book becomes more casual and relaxing than reading Copernicus' work.
• The book contains lots of information while also being a relatively quick read. Because of the aforementioned point, The Canon of Medicine can be read far faster than most books of its size and "genre." However, it strays away from this trend by being relatively easy to pick up and read through in a short timespan. The book also contains a massive amount of information, acting as a summary of practically all the medical knowledge at that time. This equates to around a good amount of courses at a modern medical school if you really want to learn the subject. Now, I am not claiming this book will make you a doctor, but you will know significantly more knowledgeable about the human body and its ailments. 
• Finally, the book was written by Ibn Sina, one of the most important scholars to date. I would personally put him on the levels of classic figures of antiquity, such as Aristotle or Plato. His book feels like an essential for anyone interested in his medical and scientific interests. Just like how I would recommend The Dialogues of Plato as a must-read for anyone who is even remotely interested in philosophy, I recommend The Canon of Medicine as a must-read for anyone who is even remotely interested in medicine or the history of medicine. This book has a lot of history behind it, being the primary textbook for medical schools in Europe for over 6 centuries. Overall, it is a very important book and it is a classic piece of medical history.